Leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific have met their own challenge to participate in at least one evangelistic program this year.
Leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific have met their own challenge to participate in at least one evangelistic program this year.
The leaders issued the challenge to church members during the launch in the South Pacific of the worldwide church’s Year of Evangelism in November 2003.
Laurie Evans, president of the Adventist Church in the South Pacific, joined Ministerial Association secretary Pastor Anthony Kent to present a three-week evangelistic series in the Solomon Islands capital, Honiara, in July. The Governor-General of the Solomons, John Lapli, who is not a church member, opened and closed the series.
Evans estimates more than 4,000 people attended each of the meetings, held in the city’s marketplace. More than 1,500 responded to Pastor Kent’s call for baptism. Evans describes preaching to the mass of people and having them respond “to the convicting power of the Holy Spirit” as an “exhilarating” experience. “I now understand how addictive evangelism is!”
Separately, church executive secretary Pastor Barry Oliver returned in July to Kavieng, Papua New Guinea, where he once served as president of the local church area. His evangelistic series, held on the town’s oval, also drew more than 4,000 people to each of the meetings.
The power of the public address system meant even those in the local Correctional Services Center, located about a kilometer away, could hear Oliver speak. Thirty of the people in the center joined 1,200 others in making a decision for baptism at the end of the series.
“I almost discouraged them because I didn’t want insincere commitments,” Oliver said, in reflecting on making what he calls an “unusual call.”
Oliver said he and Evans issued the challenge to church members “because proclamation is the pinnacle of our mission and because sharing our faith refreshes our faith.”
Evans added, “It’s so easy to get caught up with administration [that] we forget structure is and must always be the servant of mission.”
